Jorpho wrote:I'm a little on the fence about it. The whole "let's go to the idyllic planetary paradise that secretly harbors a terrible terrible secret" thing has been so completely overdone I don't even see the need to spoiler it. It's definitely not a good thing when your movie feels like it's calling back to Star Trek III or Star Trek V

My first thoughts were Forbidden Planet. (And thenceforth The Tempest, of course, by extension.) Many, many parallels. (Some mix'n' match, given Chantho Mantis served as proxy for both parts of Robby The Robot and all of Altaira, with Drax doing the Commander Adams counterpart to the latter, for example.)

I watched this, I liked it, though I do feel the first film left a better impression.

Zohar wrote:I felt like a lot of the attempts at heartfelt moments kind of fell through, but I agree with what Angua mentioned re: Drax.

I think it has to do with it having a lighthearted tone overall, with everyone being goofy or a smartass in some way, so the serious scenes felt like "okay, now someone's gonna say something funny here"

I liked it, a lot. Both the humor and drama were good but the former was a bit too ubiquitous to the (slight) detriment of emotional scenes. It was a single step from becoming a pure comedy. By the way the credits were great- not only did they have 5 mid-credits scenes but they also had a bunch of gags sprinkled throughout.

The weakest part, as with most Marvel movies, was the final confrontation.

Spoiler:

I thought the idea of the Celestial had a lot of potential but they went too evil and powerful and resolved everything too quickly and neatly. IMO, scaling things back a bit to make it more personal and a little bit more grey/ambiguous would have made it much better. Wouldn't it have been a lot cooler if he offered to turn Earth into planet Starlord but Quill refused then they reveal Ego is running around having thousands of children and some of them are accepting the offers so the Guardians decide they need to go on the offensive? Would have been nice if they didn't end up destroying the planet either but that's a complaint I have of pretty much every Marvel villain that isn't Loki.

This is a big part of why Quill's story ended up being the least interesting to me. Not bad but the least of the six main character arcs.

maybeagnostic wrote:The weakest part, as with most Marvel movies, was the final confrontation.

The problem is a lot more widespread than just Marvel (or just superhero movies) - there's a strong default for the villain to end up comprehensively defeated, and not available for the sequel(s). Partly it's the self-contained nature of movies; partly it's a desire to give the most spectacular climax possible.

Biggest spoiler of all, I forgot to add, came in one of the several intra-credit Stings...

Spoiler:

It appears that Stan Lee is not a Watcher. It has long been suspected that he was one, thus his presence in many capacities in many other films, and part way through we even see that he's with Watchers, but at the end it is plain that they are leaving him where they find him, and this seems to indicate that he is (at most) a subcontracted hiree, and possibly just someone they found on an asteroid and decided to listen to for a while.

Soupspoon wrote:Biggest spoiler of all, I forgot to add, came in one of the several intra-credit Stings...

Spoiler:

It appears that Stan Lee is not a Watcher. It has long been suspected that he was one, thus his presence in many capacities in many other films, and part way through we even see that he's with Watchers, but at the end it is plain that they are leaving him where they find him, and this seems to indicate that he is (at most) a subcontracted hiree, and possibly just someone they found on an asteroid and decided to listen to for a while.

Spoiler:

From the interviews with James Gunn, it sounds like he works for them. I guess they're just dicks who didn't want to help him get home.

'Look, sir, I know Angua. She's not the useless type. She doesn't stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that.'

Good movie, but way too many dick jokes. The humour in the first one (and at times in the second - there were still lots of good ones!) was just better done overall. I felt like Vol.2 went for the cheap laughs way too often.

The Final Battle, Ego vs. Starlord was kinda lame as well. Everyone teaming up and leaving people behind and all that jazz was sweet, but the actual fight between the two celestials somehow felt simultaneously too weak (giant rocks smashing into each other is how energy beings fight now?) and too strong (flying around like it's Superman vs. General Zod all over again). I wanted to see more creativity from Ego - even simply growing himself huge would have been more satisfying than what we got. I also wanted to see more creativity or teamwork from Starlord to make up for his being a few millions years behind Ego in terms of experience - going toe-to-toe should have just gotten Starlord completely demolished by Ego.

I will say this though - the first scene where they are fighting that giant monster is among my favourite scenes from any movie.

Last edited by SDK on Thu May 18, 2017 6:12 pm UTC, edited 2 times in total.